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But beyond the slot machines, the movie sets and the football fields, there are other problems facing Native communities – insidious, systemic, life-or-death problems; the kinds of problems it takes years and votes and marches to resolve – that aren’t getting nearly as much attention.

There are 567 tribes, including 229 Alaska Native communities, currently recognized by the federal government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs – the primary federal agency in charge of relations with indigenous communities – is also considering extending federal status to Native Hawaiians.

Each of the federally recognized tribes is a nation unto itself – sovereign, self-determining, and self-governing – that maintains a government-to-government relationship with the United States. In addition, the rights of all indigenous peoples, including Native Hawaiians, have been affirmed in a 2007 United Nations declaration.

Each indigenous nation has a distinct history, language, and culture. While many face concerns that are specific to their government, state, or region, there are certain issues that affect all Native communities throughout the United States – from Hawaii to Maine, and Alaska to Florida.

Here are thirteen such issues that you probably aren’t hearing enough about.

1. Native Americans Face Issues of Mass Incarceration and Policing

Thanks in large part to the Black Lives Matter movement, which has insisted that demands for justice and equality for the black community remain part of the national conversation, there is now growing momentum to address the issues of policing and mass incarceration.

But while the brutalization of black Americans at the hands of police, and their maltreatment within the criminal justice system, have garnered national headlines, similar injustices against Native Americans have gone largely unreported.

Earlier this month, Paul Castaway, a mentally ill Rosebud Sioux tribal citizen, was shot and killed by Denver police. His death led to protests in the Denver Native community, and has shed light on the shocking rate at which police kill Native Americans – who account for less than 1% of the national population, but who make up nearly 2% of all police killings, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Native peoples are also disproportionately affected by mass incarceration. In states with significant Native populations, Native Americans are wildly overrepresented in the criminal justice system.

If a crime is thought to have occurred on a Native reservation or within a Native community, it’s not always clear which agency is going to be in charge of prosecution. That’s determined by a complex set of factors, including the severity of the charges and the races of the victims and alleged perpetrators.

The overlapping jurisdictions of federal and tribal sovereignty also mean that Indians who commit crimes on tribal lands can be punished twice for the same offense: once under federal jurisdiction and again in tribal court.

In February, building off the momentum of Black Lives Matter, the Lakota Peoples’ Law Project released its “Native Lives Matter” report, which gives an overview of the inequities faced by Native Americans in the criminal justice system.

The report, like the voices of Native peoples in general, has been largely ignored in the growing national conversation about policing and criminal justice reform.

2. Native Communities Are Often Impoverished and Jobless

Native peoples suffer from high rates of poverty and unemployment.

17% of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders and 27% of all self-identified Native Americans and Alaska Natives live in poverty, according to US Census Bureau data.

However, the national figure distorts the prevalence of poverty on Indian reservations and in Alaska Native communities, where 22% of Native people live.

And in the heartland, the Great Sioux Nation has refused a $1.3 billion settlement as payment for the government’s illegal seizure of their sacred Black Hills in South Dakota in 1877. The faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt are etched into the Black Hills at Mount Rushmore.

4. Exploitation of Natural Resources Threatens Native Communities

Throughout the history of North American settlement, the territorial dispossession of indigenous peoples has gone hand in hand with natural resource exploitation. In the 1800s, Indian nations in the West clashed with miners pouring into their territories in search of gold.

Today, from the Bakken formation in North Dakota to the Tar Sands in northeastern Alberta, Canada, Indian nations often stand on the front lines of opposition to hydraulic fracturing and pipelines that pump oil out of indigenous communities – violating treaty rights, threatening the environment and contributing to climate change in the process.

Other groups, however, such as the Ute Tribe in Utah and the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation in North Dakota, have tried to make the most out of the economic opportunities presented by oil and natural gas extraction. For the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, the rush to cash in on oil has resulted in a mess of inadequate regulation and corruption – including allegations of murder for hire.

5. Violence Against Women and Children Is Especially Prevalent in Native Communities

Native American communities – and particularly Native women and children – suffer from an epidemic of violence.

Native women are 3.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted in their life than women of other races. 22% of Native children suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder – a rate of PTSD equal to that found among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Often, this violence comes from outside the community.

The nonprofit Mending the Sacred Hoop, citing 1990s data from the CDC and the Department of Justice, reports that “over 80% of violence experienced by Native Americans is committed by persons not of the same race,” a rate “substantially higher than for whites or blacks.”

6. The Education System Is Failing Native Students

Native Hawaiians fare better, but still underperform compared to their peers – as best we can tell from the limited data, anyway. In the mid 2000s, about 70% of Native Hawaiians attending Hawaiian public schools graduated in four years, as compared to 78% of students statewide.

For Native Americans, at least, these disparities are in large part the result of inadequate federal funding, to the point where some schools on Indian reservations are deteriorated and structurally dangerous.

7. Native Families Live in Overcrowded, Poor-Quality Housing

40% of Native Americans who live on reservations are in substandard housing. One-third of homes are overcrowded, and 16 percent lack indoor plumbing.

Housing on reservations is funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and administered and augmented by tribes, and has been historically underfunded, despite treaties and the trust responsibility of the federal government.

8. Native Patients Receive Inadequate Healthcare

Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians face massive disparities in health as compared to the general population, suffering from high rates of diabetes, obesity, substance abuse, and HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Although Native Americans and Alaska Natives are eligible to receive healthcare through Indian Health Services, nearly one in three are uninsured.

Like many other federal agencies that serve Native people, IHS has historically been underfunded. Local IHS facilities often lack basic services like emergency contraception, in some cases forcing Native patients to travel hundreds of miles for treatment elsewhere.

9. There’s a Dearth of Capital and Financial Institutions in Native Communities

Indian nations do not own their reservation lands. Rather, the lands are held in trust by the federal government.

This prevents Native Americans who live on reservations from leveraging their assets for loans, making it difficult for them to start businesses or promote economic growth in the area.

10. Native Americans Have the Right to Vote – But That’s Not Always Enough

Native Americans and Alaska Natives are often unable to vote because there are no polling places anywhere near them. Some communities, such as the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada and the Goshute Reservation in Utah, are located more than 100 miles from the nearest polling place.

11. There Is an Epidemic of Youth Suicide in Native Communities

In February, following a rash of suicides, the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota declared a state of emergency.

12. Native Languages Are Dying – And the US Government Is Doing Little to Help

Native languages are struggling to survive in the United States, with 130 “at risk,” according to UNESCO, and another 74 “critically endangered.”

While some communities, such as the Native Hawaiians, the Anishinaabe and the Navajo, have had success preserving and revitalizing their languages, Native communities face obstacles from the testing and curriculum requirements of No Child Left Behind.

And educators who want to teach young people about Native languages and cultures have to contend with a general lack of funding and resources.

13. Many Native Communities Don’t Have Their Rights Recognized by the Federal Government

Native Hawaiians, and members of many other Native communities throughout the US, have never received federal recognition of their rights as Native peoples.

This deprives them of basic services, and even of the limited rights of self-governance available to other Native communities. Many tribes spend decades wading through Bureau of Indian Affairs paperwork, only to lose their petitions for recognition.

Julian Brave NoiseCat is the Native Issues Fellow at The Huffington Post. He is an enrolled member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen in British Columbia, where he was nominated to run for Chief in 2014. Julian is a graduate of Columbia University, and received a Clarendon Scholarship to study global and imperial history at the University of Oxford. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @jnoisecat.